Europeans Are Getting Into Hybrids Just As The US Turns To Diesels

Traditionally, the U.S. has been a market where gasoline vehicles
have dominated, while hybrids have seen increasing success and
diesels have really only sold in relatively small numbers.

In contrast, low diesel fuel prices in Europe have seen its
popularity increase over the past few decades. Their high gas
mileage has generally seen hybrid vehicles occupying a small
niche in the market.

Is each continent coming around to the ways of the other? It
might seem that way, at a glance.

Automotive News reports Toyota has
seen a large rise in demand for its hybrid models, 29 percent
higher in 2012 than it was in 2011.

Toyota and Lexus hybrid new car sales have topped 100,000 models
for the first time, reaching 109,478. Over 83,000 of those were
from Toyota's hybrid range, which includes the Prius, the Prius+
(a rebadged Prius V with two more seats), Prius Plug-In, Yaris Hybrid subcompact and Auris Hybrid
compact.

At the same time, diesel models are beginning to appear in volume
on the U.S. market. Volkswagen's diesel range has been popular
for years, but several other marques now sell diesel cars too.

Importantly, two U.S. carmakers have recently joined the
fray--Chevrolet, with the Cruze Diesel, and Jeep, with its Grand Cherokee EcoDiesel. That Jeep could be
joined by even more models, and if those prove successful, it's
likely we'll see more U.S-built diesels appearing over the next
few years.

No Big Changes

Despite the increasing success of each vehicle type, we're not
expecting any paradigm shift just yet.

German auto parts maker Bosch predicted in 2012 that one in ten
new cars in the U.S. would be diesel by 2015. That seemed awfully
optimistic at the time and even more so now, with a mere handful
of extra diesels on the market.

Even if diesel Cruze and Jeep sales really take off — and they'd
need to improve diesel sales by a whole nine percent, or the best
part of 1.5 million vehicles. One tenth of the market is still a
way off Europe's diesel addiction, where over half of all new
cars sold use the fuel.

And that means hybrids have a way to go too--Toyota's total of
109,000 vehicles is 0.87 percent of Europe's total 12.5 million vehicle sales in 2012.

Like the U.S, Toyota is by far the largest seller of hybrid
vehicles in Europe--we expect Europe's hybrid figures are little
more than 1 percent--the same proportion diesels take in the U.S.
market.

So are hybrids and diesels going to take over Europe and the
U.S.? Not for a while, at least — but the good news is, consumers
are clearly looking for ever more efficient vehicles.